The very name Pat Butcher will forever be shorthand for understated elegance, subtlety and, when it comes to cosmetics, very much the natural look. Of course not. Gaudy and proud, she was the very quintessence of drag-queen-with-glaucoma-falling-into-Nelson-Mandela's-wardrobe style. Which of us, after all, has not regarded Pat in her pomp and thought, "am I sitting on the COLOUR+ button on my TV remote?"

But there was much more to Pat than pink lippy and earrings like diamante shoehorns. She was the Rutger Hauer of EastEnders. Blonde, steely, immovable and witness to countless Things You People Wouldn't Believe. Top of the list, of course, Frank Butcher, naked but for a spinning bowtie and a Muttley chortle. A vision which undoubtedly landed Pat with post-traumatic stress disorder and led directly to her heart attack a mere 10 years later. After 25 years on the square, Pat has manned every business – from the Vic to the B&B to the late, lamented PatCabs – and done the business with every man, from a fling with Den to a bit of Pat-on-Pat how's your grandfather? with Mr Trueman.

The true love of her life was Frank. She's been Pat Evans for 15 years, but to herself as much as the viewer, she'll always be Pat Butcher. Even though, in accordance with soap protocol, their happiness was fleeting, the reasons, refreshingly, were not founded so much in infidelity as in financial ruin, them inadvertently killing teenagers and Frank having a meltdown and doing a bunk. Later, with Pat married to Roy and Frank to Peggy, the pair resumed their relationship, prefiguring Max and Tanya's current extra-marital shenannigans. Though if Max tries the bow-tie stunt, they'd better put a helpline number up at the end of the episode.

In latter years, Pat's romances have taken a backseat to her more intriguing relationships with Walford's women. The animosity between Pat and Peggy resolved to mutual respect and a not entirely convincing bonding session over vodka and Calippos in a hijacked ice cram van. Meanwhile, Pat's dependability came to the fore in her relationship with Bianca, chiefly in terms of the bad things that tend to happen to the Jacksons when Pat's not there.

Given that Pat could pretty much expect to return from five minutes at the Minute Mart to find Morgan locked in the oven and Ricky proudly waving a receipt for a timeshare on The Moon, the months she spent in New Zealand predictably brought disaster to the Jacksons and cemented Pat's role as The Centre Of Things. But her feistiest opponent was step-daughter Janine. A toxic blend of suspicion, protectiveness, loneliness, enmity and unarticulated affection, little passed between them that wasn't informed by the absence of the man most important in both their lives.

And so, at this sad time, it seems apposite not to say goodbye, but simply to smile, to remember, to take a deep breath and – all together now – to go "Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!".